Concept
Anthropomorphics
The originary grammar of the center — the constituted subject as product of the scene
“The human is modeled on the non-human center—this is why I call the human science I am presenting here an “anthropomorphics.” Humans anthropomorphized themselves before they could carry out this operation on anything else.”
From the Archive
“We can speak of the originary hypothesis as articulating an anthropology, but I have come to prefer the term “anthropomorphics.” “Anthropology” implies stasis—the logic of man, or human nature.”
““anthropomorphics” was also meant to foreground the artificiality of the human, from the beginning—we were always already imitating the center that was itself nothing more than a vectorization of our converging desires turned back at us through a prohibition. This was a way of distancing myself from GA’s or any humanism and insisting on the historicity of the human.”
““Anthropomorphics,” then, suggests an ongoing transformation of the human, a dialectical movement of distancing from and retrieval of the origin.”
“The study of this practice of representation is what I have been calling, on occasion, “anthropomorphics.” The originary sign inaugurates the human, but the most “human” figure there is the central object, the prey/God of the group.”
“Center study assumes that any tracing of any idiom to its possibility and emergence will lead us back to the originary hypothesis, while anthropomorphics assumes that the originary hypothesis can only find its proof of work and concept in the jarring of an idiom. Anthropomorphics, then, is not so interested in reducing or explaining, metalanguage like, any discourse to the abstract concepts developed in the center study factory as in infiltrating other discourses and having them approximate or become successor discourses to the originary sign. If we were all deliberately replicating the originary event in every utterance we’d all be speaking in constantly novel ways that would need to be apprehended in the stream of things, and this is what the concept of anthropomorphics is indicating.”
AI Overview
— AI-generated synthesis. The archive passages above are the primary source.The title Anthropomorphics does not mean the attribution of human characteristics to non-human things. It means the grammar of the human figure — the rules that determine how persons are generated, constituted, and sustained through their participation in scenes. This grammar is "originary" in the precise sense: it derives from the originary scene, which is the scene of human constitution itself.
The constituted subject. The deepest challenge to modern anthropology is the challenge to the category of the individual. Liberal political theory — and most social theory — begins with the individual as a pre-given unit: persons with desires, interests, rights, and identities who then enter social relations. Center Study inverts this picture. The person is not prior to the scene but produced by it. The subject who says this on the originary scene is constituted by that very act of pointing — the mimetic pressure, the shared attention, the sacred binding. There is no subject before the scene; there is only the scene, and the subject is its product.
Pedagogy as fundamental. Katz argues that pedagogy is "the most fundamental human relation." The constituted subject is always constituted through instruction — through the transmission of practices, concepts, and orientations from those who have them to those who do not. This means that the master-student relation is not incidental to human development but constitutive of it. Every scene of education is a scene of constitution: the student becomes capable of new orientations by orienting toward a teacher who models them.
Originary grammar. The grammar implicit in the originary scene is not the grammar of any particular language but the grammar of signification itself — the rules for how signs work, how scenes are constituted, how attention is directed and maintained. Katz's project in Anthropomorphics is to make this grammar explicit: to identify the minimal rules that govern all human meaning-production, from the originary sign to contemporary institutional discourse.
The individual as artifact. Katz agrees with C.A. Bond's Jouvenelian analysis: the modern individual is not a natural social unit but an artifact created through specific power dynamics — particularly the dissolution of intermediate institutions by final power centers seeking to consolidate authority. The "individual" is a product of specific historical processes, not a metaphysical given. This does not mean individuals are not real; it means that their reality is scenic and relational, not autonomous and pre-given.
Across the Corpus
How this idea is developed elsewhere in the archive, earliest to latest.
“You could call this a “nature,” if you like, but since these elements of the human are only manifested in events, and therefore in differing proportions and forms, no human nature can be abstracted from the historical emergence of social forms. We are always trying to retrieve and restore some form of the originary sign, but since such attempts cannot be…”
“Coupled with this hypothesis is a hypothesis regarding the originary scene upon which humanity emerged. The anthropomorphic hypothesis (which I don’t tire of referring the reader to Eric Gans for): due to the advanced mimetic capacity of that higher primate that became our predecessor, the desire for a central object led to a violent convergence toward the…”
“The disciplines claim knowledge of the mind, the social, religion, customs, the state, beauty and so on, as things in themselves, while for the disciplinary space of originary thinking the practices given these names are all representations by those on the margins of the center. The study of this practice of representation is what I have been calling, on…”
“Now, I want to conclude this way so that I make it clear that, how, and why anthropomorphics eliminates humanism; but also to show that originary grammar identifies the always already becoming human that makes it impossible to think of any post- or transhuman project as anything other than a series of distributed attempts to declaratively hierarchize…”
“I am drawing on anthropology and history but I am not writing anthropology or history: “anthropomorphics” is completely hypothetical, following the originary hypothesis itself. All thinking is hypothetical, insofar as the issuance of any sign hypothesizes regarding the way the sign will “magnetize” a given field. I have been leading up to the emergence of…”
“Jousse is necessary for anthropomorphics because he doesn’t remark on the causal primacy of miming and then go on to talk about the activities we already have familiar names for, like “religion,” “art” and so on. He insists that we focus on the constitutive mimological character of each and every one of these human endeavors. It’s extremely instructive to…”
“The burden of this book is to follow those trails and work out a social, political and cultural theory, or, as I will call it, an “anthropomorphics,” as an originary grammar of the center. So, I will show that speaking in terms of the imperatives we are conveying, or hearing, from the center, when discussing declarative sentences and discourse, will yield…”
“Here is where an anthropomorphic theory of technoscience as applied anthropomorphics can train our thinking most powerfully. Every question, indeed, every uncertainty, shock of surprise, or aroused curiosity, can be traced back to some chain of imperatives that has confronted the questioner, but that has origins that can be traced back to the usurpation of…”
“I didn’t put it this way at the time but now I will emphasize that “anthropomorphics” was also meant to foreground the artificiality of the human, from the beginning—we were always already imitating the center that was itself nothing more than a vectorization of our converging desires turned back at us through a prohibition. This was a way of distancing…”
“Center study assumes that any tracing of any idiom to its possibility and emergence will lead us back to the originary hypothesis, while anthropomorphics assumes that the originary hypothesis can only find its proof of work and concept in the jarring of an idiom. Anthropomorphics, then, is not so interested in reducing or explaining, metalanguage like, any…”
Key Texts
The book-length statement: anthropomorphics as the originary grammar of the center, named because humans modeled themselves on the non-human center first.
Argues for "anthropomorphics" over "anthropology": the human emerges in events, not a static nature.
Revisits the name "anthropomorphics," foregrounding the artificiality and historicity of the human.
Reads anthropomorphics as ongoing transformation of the human, a reciprocal endowment of humanity.
Distinguishes anthropomorphics from center study: the hypothesis proves itself in the jarring of idioms.